Conference

UPCOMING ASQ SPRING 2027 CONFERENCE

We find ourselves at a historic inflection point. The façade of a “rules-based international order,” once invoked to legitimize political and economic intervention is rapidly eroding. What is emerging in its place is not reform, but a stark reassertion of classical imperial power: domination enforced through bombs, sanctions, conditional aid, and narrative control. In a post–October 7 world, imperial power appears increasingly unmasked, less constrained by pretense, more brazen in its assertion of hierarchy and impunity. How do we theorize this moment? What analytical frameworks help us understand this return to openly coercive global politics? What strategies of resistance are emerging? 

We welcome abstract submissions for individual papers and/or panel proposals from academics, activists and practitioners. Submissions from scholars in the region as well as graduate students and early career postdoc scholars are highly encouraged. The conference will examine several subthemes, including but not limited to:

• Military Industrial Complex and perpetual wars
• The implosion of Tufan Al-Aqsa 
• Late-stage empire and global realignments
• International law, impunity, and geopolitical hypocrisy
• Narrative warfare and information regimes
• The empire of spectacle and visual politics
• Digital resistance
• Transnational solidarity networks
• Student Intifada and campus activism
• Boycott, divestment, sanctions, and economic counter-power
• Reimagining liberation beyond the nation-state
• The role of the neoliberal university and the role of the intellectual 
• Imperial feminism and instrumentalization of women’s rights
• Anti-imperial thought in the Arab and Muslim worlds
• Political theology and resistance

• Memory, archive, and historical reclamation

   

Please submit an abstract not exceeding 450 words and short bio via our Abstract Submission Form by October 30, 2026.

Abstract Submission

Conference Program (forthcoming)
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